May 17, 2007 (EIRNS)--"American Economic Guru Forecasts Crisis in USA" is the headline over an interview (Russian language version) with Lyndon LaRouche, posted on the widely read Russian web portal KM.ru today. LaRouche was interviewed in Moscow May 15 by correspondent Tamara Miodeshevsky, and an audio-video version is expected to appear on the site soon.

The interview includes essential points that LaRouche made in his several interviews and other discussions during a three-day visit to Moscow this week. Among those are the fact that the collapse of the dollar, as the world's reserve currency, will hit other countries hard, including major powers such as China, India, and Russia. As possible detonators of the explosion of the dollar-denominated bubble, LaRouche named a possible atack on Iran, and also Al Gore's fanatical campaign around "global warming."

In these circumstances, LaRouche told KM.ru, "The USA must propose to, first and foremost, Russia, China, and India to reach agreement immediately on the creation of a new monetary system." He added, "Our approach, and our hopes, are linked, among other things, with Russian President Vladimir Putin's statements about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his traditions."

(Note: These quotations are translated from the Russian published version. Link to the transcript of the English original above. )

MOSCOW, May 16 (EIRNS)--The press service of the Anti-Globalist Resistance Group in Russia today posted the following report on its web site, www.anti-glob.ru . This article was translated from Russian by EIRNew Service.]

"LaRouche Thinks It Is Possible To Save The World"

On May 14 representatives of the Anti-Globalist Resistance met with the well-known American economist and philosopher Lyndon LaRouche and his wife, the writer Helga Zepp LaRouche, who are making a short visit to Moscow.

Lyndon LaRouche briefed them on his vision of history, which, since the 12th Century in Europe has been largely under the influence, if not the control, of banks. First it was the Venetian bankers, who subsequently resettled in Holland and established banks there, bringing Britain into their sphere as well. Then this powerful network, lightly masked as the British and Dutch monarchies, ran Europe and extended their influence, later, into the USA, intervening in world events through its agents (among whom were many figures of the French Revolution, in LaRouche's view).

Today, the world is in a very unstable situation. The world financial system is on the brink of collapse. The USA is unable to function as hegemon. The leading personalities in the government are members of the Baby-Boomer generation, brought up in a state of egoism, and divorced from tradition, by means of deliberate schemes using television and mass culture. They are unable to think about the future. But there is hope, that youth will come to take their place, and for these youth the future will again mean something.

The current situation is Europe is becoming increasingly ominous. Countries like Britain, Germany, and Belgium, which have just had elections, are becoming less and less capable of making decisions independently. As for France, where the newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly rejected the independent French policy, founded by De Gaulle, it is already clear that by doing this, he has split the nation.

LaRouche sees the rejection of monetarism as a way to overcome the crisis, along with adoption of a system of government credits to the "real economy" (continuing the ideas of F.D. Roosevelt, who overcame the Great Depression with such an approach). This requires united efforts by the USA, Russia, China, and India, which would subsequently be joined by other countries.

In conclusion, Mr. LaRouche advised not to lose hope, saying, "The world can be saved--but can we do it?"

March 23, 2007EIR News Service announced the publication of The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism, by Professor Stanislav M. Menshikov. Translated from the Russian by Rachel Douglas, the book is an authoritative study of the Russian economy during the first 15 years after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Preface, by EIR founder and contributing editor Lyndon LaRouche, titled, "Russia's Next Step," poses the need for U.S. policy-makers to study and grasp the "disease" presented in this book, since it represents "an economic global pandemic which we must all join to defeat."

Professor Menshikov, author of in-depth studies of the international and Russian economies, became famous as one of the Soviet Union's top experts on the United States. In The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism, he turns his attention to Russia in the post-Soviet period. Here is the story of the new Russian oligarchs: who they are, and how they amassed their fabulous fortunes during the chaotic 1990s. Does the emerging Kremlin financial industrial group of President Vladimir Putin's second term represent a shift? The author believes that the Russian economy has fallen into a trap, from which the only escape route leads through a fundamental break with the oligarchical system.

Comments printed on the book's back cover testify to the stature of its author. "Stanislav Menshikov has been our most astute observer of the Russian economy for many years," says Prof. James Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austin. "He saw that communism needed reform a generation ago, when it might have worked. He recognized the reforms after communism for the disaster they were. Now he gives a comprehensive account of the state of capitalism in today's Russia."

The Scottish economist Angus Maddison, who teaches at the Universities of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Brisbane (Australia), points out, "The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism is the latest of many books by Stanislav Menshikov, and the fifth to be translated into English. He is the most cosmopolitan of Russian economists, with an insider view of the old style command economy and the problems of transition. He has a comparative perspective gained by nearly fifty years scrutinizing the performance of Western capitalist economies."

LaRouche, in his Preface, which is published in full in this issue of EIR, urges Americans to pay attention to this book: "It is time to learn the lessons of Professor Menshikov's account, as they bear on the decisions which must be made, as we enter what threatens to become the worst economic collapse the world will have experienced, since a period of horrifying religious warfare was ended by the crucial adoption of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. The methods accumulated during looting of the former Soviet Union and associated Comecon nations, express the acquired habits that now threaten the ruin of the world as a whole, unless the adducible lesson of this experience of recent decades, described in this book, is learned and applied."

`Bolshevism in Reverse'

Professor Menshikov analyzes the sudden appearance of private enterprise in Russia after 1991 as "Bolshevism in reverse." He writes, "The post-Soviet Russian reformers' blueprint followed Western neoclassical dogma, according to which, to restructure socialism into capitalism, it should suffice merely to replace state-owned property with private property, and the planned economy with the free play of market forces. In reality, this was Lenin in reverse," since it was only formally that socialism had prepared the ground for capitalism, whereas in practice it had made this task extremely difficult, costing enormous social sacrifices in the form of an acute deterioration of living conditions for the majority of the population."

Chapters of The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism examine that difficult process from different standpoints: economic theory, the composition of privately owned capital in Russia, the state sector, the structure of production and income distribution, economic policy, and Russia's relationship with the globalized economy. The English edition is substantially updated from the Russian book, published in 2004, allowing a comparison of two basic periods: from the end of the Soviet Union until the Russian government bond default of August 1998, and the attempts at relaunching economic growth in 1999-2006 under Putin's administration.

Third Eurasian Conferenceon Transport in St. Petersburg

September, 2003

The Third Eurasian Conference on Transport, latest in a series that has become crucial for the promotion of continental development corridors, opened September 12, 2003, in St. Petersburg, Russia. High-ranking representatives of 40 countries are present, among them: Iranian Minister of Roads and Transport, Ahmad Khorram; the Russian Ministers of Railroads, Gennadi Faddeyev, and Transport, Sergei Frank, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Yakovlev; high-ranking representatives of the European Commission and of international shipping organizations; and the secretary of the European Transport Ministers. All of them gave speeches. Kazakstan and Belarus were granted membership in the North-South corridor, which was initiated by Russian, Iran and India. Sergei Frank reported to the meeting on a decision taken days earlier by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to coordinate transportation projects in border regions among its member countriesin the heart of Eurasia.

LaRouche Tells U.S. To Seize The Opportunity To Cooperate With Russia

December 15, 2003

Dec. 15--In response to a question about the nature of the political shift in Russia, following the recent Duma elections, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche asserted that the elections show that Russian patriots have acted to get their country back, from the international looters associated with the likes of Al Gore and the IMF. "The day of the oligarchs is gone," he said.

LaRouche then analyzed the policy directions of the Putin Administration, and told the audience:

“Don't sit back and say, what are they going to do? Predict what they're going to do? No. Why don't you take a hand in determining what they're going to do? Why don't you do the thing, knowing you have the options, when they're offering something which is in our interest, why not accept it? And that's the way to look at it.''

LaRouche's analysis of the current Russian policy, as demonstrated in the victory of his friend Sergei Glazyev, and his Rodina Party, in the elections, was this:

"Russian policy under Putin has three directions to it. One, cooperation if possible with the United States. This is a Russian instinct. Once the Soviet Union was a power, together with the United States. If the two former great powers can get together, maybe the rest of the world will have a change. Policy number two is close cooperation with Western Europe, especially Germany, France and so forth, in the development of Eurasia. The China policy, the India policy. That's clear. Third policy: if Cheney remains in power, or what he represents remains in power in the United States, then Russia will be prepared for thermonuclear war with the United States. Three policies. Now we in the United States have to decide which we want. Do we want nuclear war, fighting against a whole group of nations, including Russia with some very sophisticated weapons, China, India and some other countries? Do we want, several years down the line, such a war? If we don't, what do we do? We talk to the Russian government on those terms."

"If you simply tell the Russian government, assure them that I'm going to be the next president, we won't have a problem. It's a simple fact. Why? Because my relationship with this is, I was recognized as a genius by leading circles in Russia because of my work in economics, on what is called the science of physical economy, and they recognize that I have been right, where the Soviets had been wrong. And so a whole section of the scientific academies welcomed me.

"For example, in 1996, I was invited to a meeting in Moscow with a group of celebrities of the Russian system. It was a public meeting, it was videotaped at that time, and the purpose of it was to signal to President Clinton that what I was offering as a policy of cooperation with Russia and so forth, was something they were offering to the United States, using me as a figure who represents my own policy, and they were simply endorsing what I'm saying as something they're interested in. And chiefly because of Gore and Gore's influence, things came against me and against that policy approach. Other things developed in the same period. So we lost it.

"But that's still the same thing. I was invited by Glazyev when he was Chairman of the Economics Committee of the Russian Duma, to give a presentation to the Duma. This was a major event. I laid out there, and in other meetings we had in Europe and elsewhere, laid out my policy, and that policy is the direction in which he's going, his circles are going, which is the direction I propose. That's one example of a number from around the world, of what happens if I'm president, and this is the policy which I tried to, shall we say, persuade people around the Clinton administration to adopt. It's the right policy today. ...

"What's going on, now, between the Duma elections, there will be a change in the composition of Russian politics. It's already started. The day of the oligarchs is gone. And that's what these guys are screaming about. They want to steal it. Now they're going to a second phase in March, when the presidential elections occur in Russia, in which Putin will be running for reelection. It looks as if he might make it, the way things are right now. That means that, by the end of March, the world situation will change, for many reasons, including the present financial crisis onrushing. It will always change because the Russian process of change of direction of government, away from the day of the oligarch, will have been completed, and you will now see a new Russia, with new commitments and new orders, and the ideas which Glazyev represents, and where I have a lot of agreement with him, will be the ideas coming from there.

"The policy of Russia will be, under those conditions, cooperation with Western Europe, based on a relationship to Germany and France, in particular; cooperation relations between Western Europe, China, India, Korea and Japan and so forth, across Eurasia. This is the Eurasian development orientation. That will be the policy of Russia, as of March of this year. And that's my policy. Why not? I've been pushing it long enough."

Thank you for supporting the Schiller Institute. Your contributions enable us to publish, sponsor conferences, and support other activities which are critical interventions into the policy making and cultural life of the nation and the world.